


My Own Heart Let Me More Have Pity On

by ninaunn



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood Magic, Dragon Age Rare Pair Exchange, F/F, Friendship/Love, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Multi, Polyamory, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 17:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8067055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninaunn/pseuds/ninaunn
Summary: Old Marethari, with all her grace and wisdom, had not seen past Merrill’s blood magic to her purpose. Had still loved her, and died for her, but it had been a pointless death, and Merrill knew that.A small mercy then, Hawke thought, that she’d been able to deflect the clan’s ire enough that they did not attack. She would not have relished ending the lot of them, but if it meant defending Merrill from their bloody-mindedness, she would not have faltered.Isabela and her, they were jealous as High Dragons about the things they loved.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaptainLordAuditor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainLordAuditor/gifts).



_My own heart let me have more have pity on; let_

_Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,_

_Charitable; not live this tormented mind_

_With this tormented mind tormenting yet,_

_I cast for comfort I can no more get._

-'My own heart let me have more have pity on', by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

\--

**Act One**

\--

The silver of the knife flickered in the stark sun that hung over the mountain-side in a single bright moment, before collapsing under a splatter of bright crimson.

Hawke’s skin prickled, like a lightning storm, and the thin elf twisted her bloody hand as whining whispers sliced through the air. A static pop, ringed in red, burst from the barrier as a swan-song.

Behind her, Fenris cursed and Isabela hummed. Hawke glanced over to Varric, whose ever amiable face tightened only by a fraction. The dwarf caught her eye, and her own unease, shrugging at her raised brow on inquiry.

Merrill stammered, shoulders tight, and Hawke flexed her cold fingers.

“Sure, demons are helpful,” she couldn't quite stop herself from saying. “Right up until they take your mind and turn you into a monster.”

The elf’s face pinched, dark brows drawn as the markings on her face fold to her expression. 

_“Magic will serve that which is best in us,”_ Malcolm Hawke had always said, large hand on Bethany’s shoulder as she sat on a stump and picked her nails with a knife. _“Not that which is most base.”_

What cause did Merrill serve, she wondered, to be so reviled by her own people? The tattered cloth she wound around her palm was stained with copper. She seemed so brittle, for all her silent steps down the muddy mountain trail. 

“Well, this looks fun,” grunted Varric as they follow the blood mage into to an ancient graveyard.

\--

“What do you think?” Hawke asked Isabela later, long and languid in the lumpy bed and the cramped room the pirate had claimed at The Hanged Man.

“About what?” Isabela murmured, arms against the headboard and she stretched out her back. Her round breasts peaked and shifted, and Hawke leant forward nuzzle one fondly. Finger’s caught in her coarse hair, scratching into her scalp as Hawke nipped at a nipple.

“Merrill,” she clarified over rich umber skin, snaking a hand to run over the plump of her lover’s belly. “Odd little duck, isn’t she?”

“Sweet thing,” Isabela sighed, legs shifting under the twisted sheet. “Is going to become a thing?”

“Hm?”

“You adopting every stray puppy and lost cause that comes your way?”

Smiling to herself, Hawke traced her lips over the swell of Isabela’s bust. She’s not wrong; Hawke had been collecting fellows like a card set, and Maker knew that Carver would have had some choice words to say of their quality.

Bethany, Andraste bless her, only sighed and tweaked her sister’s cheek as she advised care.

So, with great care, Hawke thumbed Isabela’s hip and pressed her teeth to her collarbone. Pressed her legs to the pirate’s and listened to the hitch in her breath as her hand crept lower.

“You don’t seem to mind me taking you on,” Hawke said as Isabela squirmed.

“I,” Isabela began, looking down her nose to where the Ferelden smirked, “am a salty old sea-bitch, and no lost puppy.”

Hawke snorted, but did not disagree.

\--

“Blood magic?” Bethany shook her head and shuddered under her thin shawl. Argos, the great lump of a dog that he was, wheezed from where he lay smothering her legs. 

The fire in Gamlen’s kitchen was low, a small circle of light midst the gloom. Thankfully, their esteemed uncle was out for the evening; Gamlen so loved to gamble and call it business. In the next room, their mother softly wept.

Hawke chewed the inside of her cheek, toes hot inside her thin boots as they pressed against the edge of the fire grate.

“Father always said it was a dangerous temptation,” her sweet sister continued, scratching the mabari behind the ears in distraction. Hawke sunk further into the chair.

“I’m not saying it’s not,” she snorted, pulling a face when she drew her mug to her mouth. The weak tea in her hands had fallen to tepid temperatures. “Just that Merrill hardly looks like the power crazed Tevinter maniacs one normally ascribes as blood mages.”

“Appearances can be deceiving, dear sister,” Bethany chided. “She says she knows what she’s doing, but…”

The mage trailed off, grimacing into the dwindling fire. Argos huffed wetly, and shifted his large, scarred head on Bethany’s lap to look soulfully at the eldest Hawke.

“But the blood has got you all squeamish,” Hawke finished, but not cruelly. Bethany pouted at her choice of words, and did not object. She drew her shawl about her closer with one hand.

“Just be careful. Blood mages have a way of attracting attention, however well meaning.”

“Fair enough.”

\--

_“Take this secret thing, Basvaarad. Remember this day.”_

The words haunted Hawke. They echoed in her mind like a mantra the whole, wretched trek home.

Anders fumed, of course. Occasionally, a hiss seethed from his crooked mouth and blue crackled under his eyes. Aveline was stone-faced but thoughtful, already working through how this could hurt her city. Hawke was suddenly glad Isabela had declined to join this expedition; the Riviani would have hated everything about how this wretched job ended. 

Like Hawke hated it.

“What a pathetic way to choose to die,” blurted the ruffled mage, shifting under the ratty feathers on his shoulders. “The Chantry, the Qun; they’ve all got mages hating themselves for what they are.”

Hawke blinked dumbly and looked away. In her fist, the carefully carved talisman pressed into her palm. In the setting sun, she saw the flames of the qunari’s self-made pyre. He hadn’t wanted to die. He’d chosen to.

That hurt Anders. It hurt her too.

“I don’t understand,” Merrill murmured quietly from behind her. 

“Don’t you?” Hawke inquired, hanging back to let Anders and Aveline lead and bicker. A lump in her throat made it hurt to speak. “Don’t you have a purpose you’d surrender everything for?”

Because a twisted, toxic part of Hawke had understood, even as she’d begged the qunari mage named Ketojan to live. It came in the bristle of her father’s beard against her cheek and his heavy arms around hers as they embraced that final time. Corrupted blood staining his tunic.

 _“Protect them,”_ he’d told her, holding the hand that gripped the knife. _“Your brother and sister will need you after this.”_

And so when Carver ran off to join the Ferelden Army at Ostagar, she had followed. 

He had still died, leaving her a lonely watch over Bethany. And Mother.

Hawke would give everything to keep them safe. Would make a large, rash gamble like signing on to a madcap exhibition to the Deep Roads to buy their freedom. Would never let her family be indentured to a cut-throat like Meeren again.

In her hand, the talisman felt solid. Like a secret. She could still feel the long, aching want at its core. Recognised it. Still felt the heat of flames.

A harsh breath caught in her throat, and Merrill looked sharp and strained. Her small mouth was thin as she studied Hawke with grim acknowledgement. The markings on her face almost blurred in the ill-lit dusk.

Merrill had her own, desperate wants burning at the heart of her. Hawke didn’t doubt that she too would die for them if it meant salvaging something great for her people.

“Here,” Hawke said brusquely, shoving her hand out at the elf. “You should look after this.”

The talisman swung on its string until Merrill’s careful fingers came up to cradle the obsidian horn carving. When she looked inquiringly up at Hawke, she shrugged.

“There’s something in it,” Merrill noted, frowning.

“It is a secret thing, after all,” Hawke responded, trying to inject some levity to their exchange. She failed.

“I will look after it,” Merrill only said, and then, more quietly, “I’ll remember.”

\--

Fighting a mob of cranky slavers on a slippery path in a gloomy, badly lit cave was not ideal by any measure, much less when the lonely lad they’d trekked here to rescue currently had a knife to his throat.

Hawke grit her teeth, thrusting her dagger hard when a slaver overstepped and into her cut. She dug it in deep, not flinching at the spray of gore over her hands nor the clawing gurgle that heralded death.

Her shoulder still burned from where the fucker had managed to slice her.

Wrenching her dagger from the dead man’s gut, Hawke hopped back behind Aveline as she slammed her shield into the next incoming slaver’s teeth.

There was simply not enough room.

Somewhere above, Varian bellowed orders and Feynriel whimpered, and Hawke allowed herself a moment of disgruntled frustration at frightened youths making stupid decisions.

Aveline charged forth like a warhorse, battering down their foes until there was at least enough room to stand apace. Anders and Merrill had no choice but to lob spells awkwardly over their heads and hoped they hit. Breath heaving, Hawke stepped aside an incoming blow and snapped an elbow down onto the slaver’s overextended one. He yelped, and Hawke darted in close to bury a dagger into his neck.

But another of the scum was already taking his fellow’s place, whom she was still entangled with, and Aveline grappled with another swordsman to the side. A bolt of liquid fear shot to her belly as Hawke struggled to throw the dead slaver off.

Too late, for a sword was swinging her way and there was no more time. She threw her weight back, hoping that the wound would not be fatal, only to see the whites of slaver’s eyes as he jolted like a broken puppet and crumpled like one with snapped strings.

“Oh, I got one!” Merrill piped up behind her and Hawke at last shrugged off her burden. A crimson mist slipped from the slaver, and she glanced over her shoulder to see it wind back lovingly around Merrill’s wrists.

Behind the elf, Anders scowled, but Merrill lifted her arms and the mist dispensed again.

But there was a roar, and Aveline’s teeth were bared and ferocious, and Hawke let out a whoop as she pounced on another hapless soul. Slavers jolted and shuddered as their own blood defied and damaged them.

It was exhausting work, and when the slavers had all been given their due and poor, frightened Feynriel calmed, Hawke glanced to where Merrill toed at a thick pool of blood. Her face was an unearthly pale pallor, and deep bruises ringed her jewelled eyes.

“Such a pretty colour,” she murmured to herself, not noticing as Hawke approached. A black, horn carving hung at her neck.

“All ok?” asked the rogue, noting the bloody sleeves that hung over bony wrists. “Do you need Anders to-“

“No, no,” Merrill stammered, and Hawke frowned. Anders, for all his generosity in Darktown, had made no secret of his distaste of Merrill’s magic and how it spoiled the taste of her blood in healing. “I’ve used an elfroot salve, see? An old Dalish recipe.” 

Her proffered wrists were neatly bandaged, and Hawke fought the urge to take Merrill’s hand between her own. Let her own heat warm the chill she suspected had Merrill shiver. A slick unease coiled in her chest, as it did every time poured Merrill cut at her own life-force to aid them in battle.

She nodded instead, and patted the elf’s shoulder, careful as if she was made of porcelain.

\--

“You’re never alone in a clan,” Merrill commented idly, grounding her ironbark pestle into the mush and mortar. “It’s kind of the same, being in the Alienage. There are so many people, all crowded together.”

Hawke looked up from where she picked stout embrium leaves off the spindly stem, mouth just a little agape.

“I thought it would be entirely different,” she said.

The corner of Merrill’s mouth tilted just a little, and the Dalish mage glanced up a little shyly.

“It’s very different,” she agreed. “Much smellier, for starters. And everyone’s a stranger. In a clan, everyone you’ve ever known your whole life are all together.”

When Hawke was young, her family had once spent three months on a slow slog fleeing Crestwood and accusations. Just her parents and the twins and her, all trundling through awful forest and marsh and sniping at one another the whole way.

Picking at a sprout, Hawke crushed it between her thumb and forefinger. The pepper, herb scent sprung into the air.

“Didn’t it drive you a little crazy?”

“No,” huffed Merrill, who then paused and tapped her chin with stained fingers. “Well, maybe a little. Mahariel would play the most awful pranks that would leave everyone cross for days. And Tamlen would always cover for her, as he did. But it was fun, too.”

Her river-green eyes went soft and sad.

“I miss them, most of all.”

That last part came so quiet, Hawke bit her next glib comment off her tongue. That there spoke of love, and loss, and it seemed to her that Merrill always spoke of her clan with a bittersweet flavour. Sorrow marked Merrill as much as her vallaslin.

Perhaps, she pondered, there had stumbled the reason that Merrill sought the strength in her blood. A drastic, dangerous talent, Hawke had thought, right until this moment. 

Maker knew what path she would walk if the worst befell her own kin.

\--

“Look after Hawke, won’t you, Isabela?” 

She hadn’t mean to overhear, swaying as she was at the top of the stairwell. Really, the Hanged Man was so crowded, it ought to be impossible. Yet as Hawke returned from the latrine, there was Merrill, holding Isabela’s hand in both of hers, at the bottom of the stairs.

Just beyond them filtered the celebration of their friends; loud and liberal and leery. Varric’s voice was chief among the clamour, accompanied by Bethany’s laugh and Fenris’ bark.Carver and her had celebrated, that night before Ostagar, in the exact same manner. But that was not to be dwelt on.

“I-I mean, look after yourself too,” stumbled the elf, and Hawke paused from where she’d been about to announce herself. “I would be very sorry if either of you got hurt in the Deep Roads.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Kitten,” Isabela chuckled kindly. “I’ll keep a careful eye on her.”

It was sweet. The pair of them looked warm and sincere and they bothered to care for her, and that made Hawke’s heart tumble and her feet trip.

“Whoops!” Clearly Corff’s finest ale was stronger than she’d given it credit for. Hawke had certainly consumed it liberally, now crashing down onto her friends just so. 

Isabela caught her in sure, salt-skinned arms and Hawke grinned goofily up at the both of them.

“Oh hello,” Merrill said from behind her fingers, eyes wide as she peered down. Isabela raised a quizzical brow, eyes dark with fondness as gold glinted about her neck. It was a lovely picture, right to be remembered and cherished.

She would, Hawke promised herself, bring back such gifts to make up for such worry.

\--

**Act Two**

\--

It was hard not to look at the Gallows and not taste bile slick on her tongue. 

Rolling her stiff shoulders, Hawke swallowed. Tried not to think of her sweet sister locked in some dim room, heavy manacles of her delicate wrists. 

No one had ever accused Hawke of an overactive imagination, for what good it did her now. Anders’ contacts in the Underground Railroad promised Bethany was hale, and Isabela had shown Hawke the wistfully shocked notes her sister had sent.

Still, she hated coming here, even if business with Solivitus was good. Varric was already arguing with the Formari herbalist for a better deal. Having a fortune was no reason to be complacent with the state of her coffers, and finding rare herbs was no trouble during her escapades..

Scuffing at cobblestones, Hawke tried not to think on Bethany as she’d last seen her; grave and gracious and flanked by templars. Tried not to imagine raw wounds at her wrists and ankles, a slack expression and that dreaded, damned mark on Bethany’s forehead.

Stretching out her twitching fingers, Hawke grabbed Argos’ collar. The great lug openly growled at every templar that passed by.

A soft touch pressed against her bicep, and Hawke looked to the side to see Merrill’s heart-shaped face, brow crinkled in concern.

“I’m sure she’s ok,” the Dalish elf said softly. “Your sister is quite clever. Like you, really, but with less swearing.”

Hawke blinked, and Merrill’s open expression faltered and she withdrew.

“Was that-“ Merrill fumbled, fingers locked together. “I thought maybe you were worried and-“

A soft thread in Hawke’s chest twisted.

“I was,” she said, and her friend looked up. “Thanks.”

\--

Merrill’s house had enough drafts to rival Varric’s writing desk and none of the character.

“Oh, Hawke,” Merrill exclaimed, eyes wide as she scrambled up from the dusty floor. Ochre stains dotted her long fingers and worn parchment, herbs and coloured vials littered the floor where she’d been sitting. “I didn’t expect you. Not that I was expecting. Anyone, I mean.”

A grin pulled at Hawke’s face.

“I do so like to defy expectations,” she replied, amused when Merrill quirked her head to the side like an over-large owl.

“Well…that’s good. I think.” The elf bounced on her toes.

“It’s marvellous,” Hawke assured, sauntering in over the threshold. Merrill tended to forget things like inviting people in; after the first few awkward visits of hovering in the doorway, Hawke no longer hesitated.

With brawny arms, she lifted the parcels she bore and smiled.

“I come bearing gifts.”

Red flushed over Merrill’s pale cheeks, at last rushing forward to offer a seat and whatever meagre rations were squirreled in her dusty cupboard. Hawke waved off refreshments, setting her burden on the presented bench and tried not to feel too pleased with herself.

Hawke could not help but treat her favourite ruffians and outcasts with lovely things, not now she could afford them. Kirkwall was no kind city; rough and raw at the edges. It peaked through at the corner of people’s eyes, on the points of their teeth. 

You could carry in a pack the things Hawke and her family had salvaged from Lothering; kindness seemed to be a good relic from her old home to hang onto. 

That had changed. Like so many other things, but to dwell on those would only make her sad.

So, she settled for plying people with useful, pretty things. Gifts to draw a smile, at the least.

“Mother sent a quilt,” she explained as Merrill reverently unwrapped the gifts. “She had to do something with all those old shirts we kept finding, and underneath it is something I think will particularly interest you."

Nodding and still flushed, the lanky elf folded the finely made, if somewhat coarse, quilt and carefully placed it at the edge of the bed.

“Oh, it is lovely,” Merrill enthused, tracing the diamond pattern sown in stitches. When she turned back, Hawke noted the rapid pace of her blinking. 

It shamed her to see; for all the contention, Hawk’s family had never been short on affection. Merrill stiffened whenever she was spoken too, already ready to defend herself at every turn. And had to, if Fenris or Anders were in attendance. Always seemed baffled by every warm gesture, a hand on a shoulder. A smile.

“That’s not even the best part,” Hawke hastened to say, for both their sakes. With flourish, she bowed to the remaining parcel on the wonky bench.

Thin hands cradled the gift, turning it over with deliberate care to study the sun-burst cover.

“A book?” Merrill’s expression was pleased, if puzzled, as she opened the tome. “Oh!”

“Oh indeed,” chuckled Hawke, stepping in to look over a bony shoulder. “It called ‘The Greater Tome of the Mortal Vessel’. Thought you might find it interesting.”

Merrill squeaked as she flicked through pages clogged with script and pictograms. Her head bobbed, and a grin stretched over her small mouth.

“Hawke, it’s beautiful,” she cooed. “Thank you!”

It’s Hawke’s turn to flush at the avid sincerity. She ran a hand through her hair and shrugged as Merrill beckoned her over to start exploring the knowledge hiding within the dusty pages.

\--

“It doesn’t worry you at all?” 

Hawke started from where she had been watching Isabela from across the crowded tavern. The echo of a sultry laugh teased through the general chatter, and Hawke tried not to dwell on the way the pirate’s eyes had darkened at the sailor she’d solicited a drink from.

Her nose scrunched as she belatedly registered Varric’s comment.

“Huh?”

“Daisy’s mirror,” the dwarf exclaimed over his pint, brows drawn over his hooked nose. “Give me the shivers every time I step into her house.” 

“Dear Varric,” Hawke expressed with sincere mockery. “You’re not that ugly.”

Varric snorted into his drink, and pretended to glower.

“Hah har,” he said, pulling an embroidered handkerchief from his sleeve to wipe his face with. “Seriously, you don’t…feel anything when you see it?”

Tearing her gaze again away from Isabela’s cocked hip, Hawke shrugged. She’d felt something from Merrill’s strange mirror, a whisper on her skin, maybe. Nothing alarming though; they’d encountered far worse during their expedition to the Deep Roads.

“What’s to see?” Hawke tapped a nail against her own pint. “It doesn’t reflect anything.”

“That’s my point!”

Hawke sighed and slumped forward, and tried not to think of the way Isabela had been subtly but surely avoiding her.

“Look,” she began, holding a palm up. “Merrill says she has it under control-“

“With bloo-“

“And it’s important to her,” Hawke stopped him firmly. “You saw how her clan treated her.” 

Varric stuck his bottom lip out, but did not argue. They both knew grief was a dangerous thing, especially for a blood mage. But Merrill was clever and sure, and so, so determined to help the people who had knocked her back time and time again. 

And she knew so much; all of her Dalish stories and charms and potions, and an infinite number of other wisdoms that Hawke’s dull head could barely wrap around. Who was she, little more than a mercenary, to confiscate Merrill’s life-work?

Hawke did not want to be another friend who turned her away. Would not be. Maybe the mirror was dangerous, but everything in this wretched city was. The best Hawke could do was to try and keep dear Merrill safe.

 _“It’s a Keeper’s job to remember,”_ her friend had said. _“Even the dangerous things.”_

Merrill believed it to be important, so Hawke would help her fight for it.

\--

“Oh,” Isabela said, halting on her heel. “You don’t want me in there.”

Hawke’s step faltered as she sent an arch glance over her shoulder. To her side, Varric chuffed and licked his thumb. They’d made a bet on their resident pirate’s disinclination to associate with the qunari; Hawke owed the damn dwarf six sovereigns. 

The karasaad at the compound gate did not move, as still as the stone walls about them.

“Uh,” Isabela stalled, one hand rolling through the air in some abstract, distracted gesture. “Female troubles.”

That made her eyes widen, but Isabela’s expression did not break or falter or wince. No amateur liar, obviously, but by the time Hawke had glanced to Varric and back, the Rivaini was sauntering down the stairwell with a hand thrown up in goodbye.

“You know,” Varric said mildly. “I’m almost worried.”

Hawke frowned at Isabela’s back, but could not think of a reply.

\--

Her room was dark and quiet with dawn so close to peeking over the horizon. It had been a long night, was still a long night, and there was an ache in her bones that Hawke thought would never fade. What with the stink of blood clung to Hawke’s clothes, her hair, her memory. 

She could taste it on her tongue, the horror of it all.

 _“My little girl,”_ her mother had said, broken on the dirty, blood-stained floor in the middle of a nightmare made real. As if they were back in Lothering and she’d scraped her knee scrapping with the miller’s son as Leandra soothed her irrepressible ire. 

Hawke was not so little now, but oh she felt small.

At her feet, Argos whined, scent thick with gore and grieving. His large, wet muzzle nudged at her icy hands.

Outside her door, voices rose and fell and Hawke pretended not to know them. Isabela urged Merrill to enter, to be a balm against the ragged wound of her heart. Her sultry voice was low and strained, but Hawke could still mark it. Could mark Merrill’s soft confusion as she deferred that place as the pirate’s. 

Hawke did not want to see either of them. Isabela for her brusque pity. Merrill for her kindness.

That, and Hawke did not think she could cope to see the wrappings on Merril’s wrists and the gold at Isabela’s throat. She did not want to harm them with her grief; better to let it cut up her insides alone. 

Father and Carver were dead. Bethany was locked in the Gallows and refused to see her. Isabella was slowly but certainly drawing away and Mother-

A long, loud sob tore its way from her throat, and Argos whined and licked her hands. His heavy head rested on her knee and snuffled at her fingers.

Her mother was dead. Hawke had failed.

 _“Protect them,”_ her father had said, blacked fingers wrapped around where, shaking, she’d held the knife.

And now what was left but loyal Argos at her knee, and wan Bethany locked in the Gallows. A lover who longed to leave her. A friend who drew ever further down his road of vengeful thorns.

What comfort came then with dawn?

\--

_Dear Hawke,  
I have the relic and I’m gone._

Aveline cursed and Merrill gasped and Hawke did not need to read any further to know she’d been abandoned.

\--

About a second after Knight Commander Meredith proclaimed her Champion of Kirkwall, Hawke’s body promptly cashed in all that she owed it by crumpling like a discarded letter onto the solid inevitability of the Keep’s cold, marble floor.

Consciousness clung on with stubborn inevitability, and Hawke had enough thought to note bitterly that of course Meredith would attempt to siphon of some of Hawke’s supposed glory.

Not that it was doing her much good; splinters of light flickered at the edges of her vision, turning faces and bodies into shapes and smudges. A hollow ache existed in the bones of her rib cage, and everything felt like so much effort. An odd numbness in her side was turning sharp, marked by red, red and more red.

Somewhere, in front of Kirkwall’s grasping, gasping nobility, the body of the Arishok lay in final repose. His Antaam had long gone, silent and solemn, taking the Arishok’s sword and that bloody cursed holy book. All they left was a city in chaos and a monstrously sized corpse, broken and bloated by immovable, intractable conviction.

Then she remembered the Viscount’s head, the heavy and wet sound it made as it hit the floor, and thought she should feel ill.

Then she remembered running.

The Knight Commander had not lifted a finger to help her, but her sister cried as a soft, familiar presence bundled her sweaty head into a lap. Violent feeling shot through Hawke’s nerves, and she smiled at Bethany’s tear stained face. 

Not cold now, or angry. But alive. Maker bless, her sister lived.

She ought to wipe away Bethany’s tears, but her fingers were stiff and numb and everything felt so cold.

“Don’t you dare die, you bitch,” scolded another voice, accompanied by the glinting of gold. 

Impossible, though, Hawke thought blearily. She’d left. Or she had, but then returned, and that’s what the duel had been about. Nothing felt solid to Hawke’s fractured consciousness. 

“Out the way,” Merrill trilled, and Hawke felt a pull as bony hands pressed over her belly. Slick, unnameable things rolled slow through her vision, her hearing and veins. Everything seemed so slow.

Well, not a pull. More like movement. Some part of her she did not know and it was almost uncomfortable. Almost unnatural, like the pied piper singing the children home.

“There,” and that was Merrill again, sounding as stern and commanding as she’d ever heard her. Like a proud Keeper of old. “That will stop the bleeding until Anders can get here.”

She regretted now never kissing her.

“I’m so sorry, Hawke,” someone sobbed, a tight pressure on her wrist. “I didn’t want this. Why did you fight for me?”

“Because I love you.” But she could not say it.

“Hang on, sister!”

“Hawke!”

“Champion!”

The world faded into a blissful void.

\--

**Act Three**

\--

“So, I see Merrill has moved in.”

Isabela swung her long legs up and over the arm of the chair, boot buckles glinting from the low lit fire of Hawke’s study. The dark of her eyes were also lit by the warm glow from where they hid behind a goblet. 

Shrugging at the pirate’s obvious scrutiny, Hawke rolled her head back to gaze at the emboss on her ceiling.

“Have you seen the state of her house in the Alienage?” Hawke puffed out her cheeks to hide a frown. “I’m fairly sure the rats have declared it a sovereign state.”

That elicited a soft snort from Isabela. The furrow in Hawke’s brow deepened.

“Well, I’m glad,” Isabela declared, like a seneschal declared the lists. “If a little surprised to see you two playing house.”

“That’s not fair.” She hadn’t meant to reply so sharply, but the words cut against Hawke’s teeth and into the air before she had a chance to steal them back. Mild unease thickened into a coiling serpent in her gut, and Hawke now did not wish to pull the retort from her tone.

“What?”

The reply was light, but there now were the tenterhooks they both had carefully tip-toed around since Isabela so generously decided to return to the City of Chains.

Dropping her gaze down, Hawke’s eyes narrowed at Isabela’s bare-faced defiance. Neither of them welcomed the chink in their armour that softness and surety lent; once they’d laughed together at their own coarse affection. Now they feared to wound each other.

“Three years, Isabela.” The words were slow and shapely in her mouth, and for all their accusation there was not a little bite. “With nary a note to know if you lived or died.” 

Isabela blinked her heavy lidded eyes, shifting her long legs to set one heel on the chaise arm. Hawke did not miss how her fingers tightened on her goblet.

“I had…business to attend,” the pirate settled for, though the answer felt empty. From her frown, Isabela agreed, for she licked her lips as if to seek out better a phrasing.

But patience had never been one of Hawke’s virtues, and neither had her temper, and now hidden hurt lined her throat.

“Business that included avoiding me,” Hawke said sourly. There had been a particular taste of despair to wake from her convalescence after the Arishok's duel to discover that again she had been abandoned. “I get it, you know. I’m not the brightest, but I’m not stupid.”

With plush lips and fire-lit eyes, Isabela scowled.

“It was better that I wasn’t around,” she asserted, expression drawn and flicking to and fro from Hawke’s own. “Hawke, I’m happy for you. I’m happy for Merrill. I told you.”

A loud and ungainly snort erupted from Hawke’s nose, for she’d seen the door slammed shut in Isabela’s bearing when she’d at last returned to find the Dalish mage running down her Hightown halls.

“You told me a noble lie,” Hawke pressed. “Very moving.”

Agitation and anger now flitted through the pirate’s face, and Hawke wanted to reach out. Trace the line of Isabela’s cheek or card a hand through her wild hair.

“Well shit, Hawke,” Isabela all but snarled. “What else am I meant to do?”

“Come home.”

She meant it. Maker damn her for a fool, but Hawke meant it. Had forgiven Isabela for the betrayal even as it broke her heart. And she was so, so tired of losing.

But Isabela had her hackles raised now; ready and wary and so afraid of causing more damage than she thought she was worth.

Hawke sighed heavily and tried to sort through the vines of feeling winding through her chest.

“I wanted Merrill safe,” Hawke said softly, heavy now with the weight of her mantle that hung over her outside these walls. Kirkwall was not a kind city. “And the house has been too empty since…”

Her throat clamped shut at that thought; three years and still Orana was the only one to venture into her mother’s old room.

Luckily the Amell estate had no shortage of rooms. Merrill had laughed to discover them all, and it had been right to take her hand and draw her in. They fit well, all their angular pieces and social stumbles.

But still, Hawke had ever stared wistful at the smell of sea-salt on the wind.

“I want you safe, too,” she ended lamely, with a small, resigned shrug.

A low curse came from Isabela, and she downed the rest of her drink almost defiantly.

“Hm. Greedy thing, aren’t you?” But her eyes were bright, and a thumb wiped at the wine stain over her lips.

“Almost criminally so.” Hawke agreed, because she was. 

Setting the goblet down, Isabela huffed. Stretched back her languid arms as her ample breasts bulged. 

“A pirate in the making?” A smile curled at her mouth, and Hawke felt her heart leap as Isabela shyly ducked her head. “I’ve never had a home, not really.”

Forward in her seat, Hawke blinked back the brightness in her eyes.

“You do with me. With us.” Emotion coated her words with thick affection. “We love you.”

And it was true.

\--

The Hanged Man smelt of stale beer and vomit, but the air was warm, if stuffy, and Varric’s grin was as wry as it was wide as he lifted a battered, brass mug.

“First,” the dwarf drawled. “I feel congratulations are in order. Broody, you’re a grim sort, but a good one, and I’m glad we could help out with that little magister problem of yours.”

A startled laugh bubbled from Hawke’s chest to see the flush of Fenris’ feeling as Sebastian clapped him on the shoulder and Isabela cooed her compliments. Danarius was not a week dead, and already she had seen her friend stand straighter.

“A more wretched hive of scum and villainy, I have never encountered before Kirkwall,” he said in solemn reply, with an earnest, grateful nod her way. “And I owe it, and you, my freedom.”

Beside her, Merrill clapped in cheerful enthusiasm, bobbing in her seat enough to almost upset the drinks on the table. With a put upon sigh, Aveline righted the mess.

“The city does grow on you,” Varric chortled. “Like mould.”

“No thanks to you lot,” the Guard Captain grumbled, even as she smiled at her husband. Donnic scratched at his side-burns before leaning in to gaze adoringly at Aveline.

“Don’t lie,” sidled Isabela, shooting Hawke a flirtatious wink as she bent generously over the table. “You love its villainy just as much as we do. You’d be bored otherwise.” 

Aveline scoffed and Fenris raised his glass to that as Varric set about dealing the card deck.

“Oh, it is good,” the Dalish mage said loudly in Hawke’s ear, eyes bright. “I’m glad we could help.”

“Me too,” Hawke replied, staring at the flush on Merrill’s face and the genuine pleasure and marvelling at her generosity. Anders had not been near so animated about freeing Fenris from Danarius’ shadow.

It made her think of Merrill and her clan, of Marethari’s abject insistence that her former First was walking surefooted into damnation and the way the hunters had spat her name. Of the way Fenris and Anders needled her for her blood magic, unwilling to trust Merrill’s own conviction in the face of their own.

Merrill had not ever hesitated to help either of them.

Tugging a thin hand, Hawke lent forward to plant a clumsy kiss at the corner of Merrill’s mouth. Her green eyes blinked and the flush on her cheeks deepened to rich red.

“What a lovely thing to do,” Merrill giggled. Hawke caught Isabela’s fond look as the Rivaini kicked Anders under the table for scowling at them.

Isabela was quite amazing, really. Impeccable timing. Marvellous boots.

“I’m a lovely person,” Hawke confirmed breezily. 

“Not in the morning, you’re not,” snickered the pirate.

“Do tell,” Varric asked, slipping cards up his sleeves even as he dealt them.

A good night, Hawke thought with secret pleasure to herself. A small bastion against the storm and shit that was Kirkwall.

Something for her to keep.

\--

Merrill’s thin shoulders shook like shutters during a storm. Above her, the cool sheen of the eluvian loomed like a silver spire, still stark in the dark hovel of Merrill’s old home.

The Dalish mage had disappeared as soon as they’d returned the city, and Hawke had given her space. Maker knew that grief came hard and hectic in strange ways. 

So, she’d dragged Isabela back to her estate, and the two of them had done a piss poor job of patching each other up and quietly worrying over the third part of their hearts. After an hour had not seen Merrill returned to them, Isabela took a long swig of some of Hawke’s finest rum, looked her dead in the eye and told her to get her battered arse down to the Alienage and find Merrill. 

And here, she’d found a door ajar and Merrill a sobbing wreck before the artefact she’d given so much to restore.

On the night one year after Leandra had died, Merrill had lain awake for its entirety with Hawke, carding her slim fingers though her coarse hair and whispering old songs and stories to distract the grief. Hawke did not have that same gentleness, that care; her calloused hands were too rough and raw to be tender.

“All this time I thought I could help them,” Merrill wept, wiping her wide eyes with the backs of her hands. Blood still stained her wrists and armour. “Save them. But they won’t let me, will they? They’ll destroy themselves to avoid my help.”

“You can’t help people without their consent,” Hawke agreed ruefully. All the while, her heart called her a hypocrite, for when had Hawke ever given up a lost cause?

Merrill’s bowed head shook.

_“You always knew your blood magic had a price, da’len. I have chosen to pay it for you.”_

Old Marethari, with all her grace and wisdom, had not seen past Merrill’s blood magic to her purpose. Had still loved her, and died for her, but it had been a pointless death, and Merrill knew that.

A small mercy then, Hawke thought, that she’d been able to deflect the clan’s ire enough that they did not attack. She would not have relished ending the lot of them, but if it meant defending Merrill from their bloody-mindedness, she would not have faltered.

Isabela and her, they were jealous as High Dragons about the things they loved. 

Hawke told her that, promised she would not be alone in what was to come next. Never mind the fear that stalked the streets or the twisted road the Knight Commander and Orsino led the city down, Merrill was not alone.

As Hawke gathered the Dalish mage into her arms and pressed her lips against Merrill’s temple, she vowed again to her beating heart that she would not lose her, or Isabela.

Her heart was large, Hawke knew, as Merrill burrowed her face into her neck and sniffed. She deserved kindness and care, and Hawke would bear any number of sufferings to provide it.

\--

“You look so pale,” Hawke blurted out, suave as usual. Anders paused where he bent over his table of tonics, and raised a blond brow. “Are you sure you won’t come and stay for a while? Just to get your strength back?”

It was futile, she knew.

“No,” Anders replied wearily. “I am needed down here. I-“

His protestations are cut off by a wicked bout of hacking coughs, and Hawke reached out with a flagon of barley water and rubbed Anders’ bony back. 

The scent of cheap candle wax and crushed elfroot barely the wet, musty odour that inhabited all of Darktown. Bunches of dried herbs hung from the ceiling helped the smell some, but there was no disguising the bloody bandages stored in the corner, the grey stained sheets of the cots or the filth that coated the floor. A rare, quiet moment in Anders’ clinic only made it feel all the more shabby. 

Not that Anders ever allowed her to help as much as she wanted; stubborn man that he was with his pride.

Thus, Hawke waved Anders away when he tried to return the flagon, wincing as he held a hand over his mouth.

“Merrill boiled it with some interesting herbs to help your throat,” she explained, frowning at the sharp line of his jaw and bruised eyes.

Anders shook his head as he slowly lowered himself to a rickety chair, a bitter set to his lips.

“Huh,” he huffed, eyeing the flagon in his hand with unwarranted suspicion. “You sure she didn’t summon a demon to magic it, instead?”

Her shoulders stiffened immediately, and Hawke had to bite the urge to snarl.

“That is unkind and unworthy of you,” she said tightly, turning from his watchful gaze to sort the supplies she’d come to deliver.

Anders snorted, but looked away when at last Hawke returned to face him.

“You’re determined then?” His voice was still frail with his illness, but the harsh edge to it was unmistakable. “To keep her with you?”

“I am determined to keep all my friends with me,” Hawke answered blandly, and felt stone settle into her expression.

Bethany had once said Anders had reminded her of their father, and there were times Hawke had seen it. Years ago, before the rot of Kirkwall had truly began to settle into Anders’ bones. More surely than the taint ever had. 

Still, here with his potion-stained hands and Justice simmering so close under his skin and all the weight of persecution at his throat, sometimes Anders seemed a stranger.

“Don’t be obtuse,” he snapped, before catching himself. His shoulders heaved and turned inward. “You know, I’d once thought…but I guess it doesn’t matter. I can only hope she doesn’t turn on you, like Isabela.”

A hot and furious fire snarled in her chest, and Hawke strode forward fierce enough to make him pause. With whip-crack speed, her hand snapped out to grab his chin and Hawke stared at the bitter taint of a gaze that had once been unclouded and kind.

“This is boring and old, Anders,” Hawke told him with quiet conviction, watching a muscle in his jaw move. “And just another way for you to martyr yourself. Enough.”

Releasing his face, Hawke stepped back and flexed her strained hands at the glimmer of blue that had begun to break through his skin. Anders dropped his gaze to his trembling fingers, brow furrowed, and Hawke ached to see the thing he’d turned into.

She’d tried. Maker, his cause was just but it was killing him.

“I’m sorry,” Anders said, inhaling long and loud. “That was rather petty of me. And…unfair.” 

To Merrill, he did not say, but Hawke did not have the heart to fight him again over it.

\--

Again everything had gone to shit and Hawke grit her teeth as she ducked under a rogue templar’s blade. Bethany’s limp body lay sprawled in the dirt, and poor Thrask bled with twisted agony with a finality that none could undo. The acrid tang of Grace’s blood magic tainted the air and Hawke pushed forward to gut the bitch.

Maker damn her, Thrask deserved better.

Bethany was so still.

For all her vitriol, Grace died just as well with a blade in her belly. Hawke did not flinch as blood bubbled at the mage’s lips and the whites of her eyes showed fear.

About them, mage and templars alike had fallen to Hawke and her compatriots. They had fought bigger and nastier things, but the intertwined broken bodies was not the worst of it. Thrask had started something, and now all that potential lay crumbled by petty pride and hate.

Panting hard, Hawke wiped her daggers off the dead mage’s robe and straightened. Fenris picked through a templar’s pockets as Merrill fondly tried to brush gore off Varric’s coat.

What a mess. Hawke spat in disgust.

“I-I’m sorry,” Alain flinched when Hawke turned her flinty gaze his way. His dark brown face was tense and tried, and his hands wound through the hem of his robe.

Bethany lay between them, still as stone and Hawke could not quite make herself approach for terror. She could not bear it to find her sister bereft of breath. No, Hawke was certain no blow had struck her, but Carver’s pale, pinched face haunted her and froze her limbs. 

Not Bethany too, oh Maker, no.

“Grace used blood magic to hold her,” the Circle mage continued hesitantly, stepping out with out-raised hands. “There’s no other way to wake her up.” 

“Don’t you touch her!” Venom burnt at her heart and mouth as Hawke sprung to her sister’s side. Yes, Hawke was pleased to see Alain fall back at her fury.

“Ma vhenan,” spoke Merrill, laying a hand light on her shoulder even as Hawke bared her teeth at Alain’s stammer. “Hawke, I can help.”

There were no words in her throat bar fear and anger and so Hawke nodded and prayed and watched as Merrill took her slim knife to her palm. Three droplets lit the air, making it snap and focus familiar, and Merrill bit her lip to wrest the magic to her whim. 

Hawke almost sobbed to hear Bethany’s sharp inhale.

“What happened?” Bethany blinked sleepily, and readily took Hawke’s shaking hand to haul her up. “The last thing I remember these templars were coming into my quart-”

Her sister squeaked to be pulled into so tight a hug, but Hawke cared not. Bethany huffed and sighed and Hawke ruffled her hair, and they clung to each other a moment to forget all that time had stolen from them.

Over Bethany’s shoulder, she mouthed her thanks to Merrill, who smiled sadly and nodded even as she tended to the wound on her palm.

Oh, occasionally the Maker was kind.

\--

He blew up the Chantry, and with it, any small chance Kirkwall had of keeping its composure.

Hawke could not forgive Anders for that.

She could not kill him, either, in the end. Even with Sebastian bearing down in all of his righteous fury. What was Anders but a man pressed against a knife’s point until he turned it upon his attackers? 

Hawke had failed, had known he was breaking. Had somehow helped all her friends but him. Her father had always said to judge a man by his actions and not his make-up, and she had thought-

Anders had striven for so long to help people, and Hawke had not been able to see where that desperate duty led. 

And it seemed Kirkwall was the price of that failure.

\--

The moon was bright and beautiful in the glittering sky. Kirkwall remained naught but a dark stain on the horizon as sea-spray stung her skin and coated her tongue. The ocean was wine-dark beneath them, and Isabela laughed wildly from where she manned the ship’s wheel. 

Hawke ached, burned, wept. For all her fighting and scrounging, again she found herself fleeing a home with the tattered remains of her family from something corrupted. 

Acid burned at her throat to think of those she’d buried, and those she’d left behind. Corrupted Orsino and Meredith stricken mad. Hawke knew Aveline would never have left her duty; the Guard Captain had made her own home and family midst Kirkwall’s dusty streets. Donnic and Fenris would be better for her than Hawke had ever been. Varric, too, loved that wretched city, and her old friend had smiled sadly into their last embrace.

Anders was gone, with all his guilt. Hunted, no doubt, by Sebastian’s grief, but Hawke refused to let her heart rest there. 

Carver in Ferelden. Mother in Kirkwall.

But Bethany, sweet Bethany, so strong against the terror, was still alive. There at least Hawke had not failed. 

Bethany had bundled up the ragged remains of the Circle and even now was soothing them in the cramped quarters below deck. Sorrow ran tracks down her sister’s face from betrayal and grief, but she was strong. Argos, the sook, clung to her side and battered at everything with his keen tail. Hawke knew her sister had found her own cause, her own people within the shadow of the Gallows.

Hawke was not alone.

Just look, came a wide toothed grin to her mouth, at Isabela standing proud and perfect. Sure hands at the wheel and dark hair alive against the wind; a bright glimmer in the gloom. She was magnificent with her gold and glee at the long stretch of sea. 

Hawke did not know how exactly the pirate had managed to acquire a ship, but some things were better left to mystery. She’d swept the pirate into a gallant dip and stolen her breath with an open-mouthed kiss that had put even Varric’s romances to shame when Isabela had said slyly she had an out for them.

The joy of it still danced on Isabela’s mouth.

And Merrill, no longer small and uncertain, hand bone tight in her own as they stared back at the city that had taken so much. Her face was pale beneath her vallaslin, and somewhat grave, but she smiled at Hawke’s scrutiny.

“Well,” began the Dalish mage. “Isabela always said she’d show us the ropes if she ever got us on a ship. I always thought she meant something dirty, though.”

A loud bark of laughter cracked her ribs and emptied her lungs, and it felt good to heft such emotion to the surf.

Meredith was warped to stone and Orsino, an abomination, and Kirkwall still had no viscount, but that no longer mattered. Hawke allowed herself to hope.

“You may be proven right yet, my love,” Hawke pitched, fingers tight and entwined with Merrill’s own. She kissed the blush on Merrill’s cheeks and traced her elegant ear as Merrill sighed into her mouth.

A wolf-whistle broke them apart and both looked up to the stern where their illustrious and voluptuous captain winked.

“Save some for me,” Isabela cried, and then laughed again at the sea and sky. 

The sight of her, of Merrill, and the knowledge of the both of them stole Hawke's breath and swelled her heart, and lit a lovely mile all the way to the horizon.

\--

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to The Black Emporium Dragon Age Rare Pair Exchange for BisexualZuko.
> 
> Phew this was tough to write. I loved it, but it took some work :p. Mainly because I cannot do one shots, and then I wanted to look at every angle of what this wonderful rare pair would entail. Also I always get distracted by the DA2 gang; they're all so interesting. My main trouble was with writing a Hawke who had little to no qualms with blood magic, so it kinda ended up being more about trust in Merrill than curiosity about magic. Hopefully I covered all of the request, and the happy ending is implied in our lovely trio literally sailing off into the horizon!
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed it, it was interesting to write!


End file.
